The Best Western Arroyo Roble Hotel, which stands at the northern end of Uptown, is a familiar feature to residents and one of the last things visitors see of the city before making their way into Oak Creek Canyon — but it is also the site of an historic landmark that few know about.

According to Verde Valley Archaeology Center Executive Director Ken Zoll, from 1953 to 1960 the Sedona Meteorite Museum stood in the hotel’s place. Before its closing, the building housed nearly 2,500 specimens, including the Camp Verde Meteorite — a 135-pound shard of spacefaring rock uncovered from ruins along Oak Creek, east of Camp Verde, by a collector of American Indian relics in 1915.

“Subsequent studies confirmed that the Camp Verde Meteorite is a coarse octahedrite from the Canyon Diablo fall east of Flagstaff that created Meteor Crater about 50,000 years ago,” stated Zoll in a press release. “But how did a 135-pound meteorite make its way 100 miles from Meteor Crater to Camp Verde without the use of a wheeled conveyance or beasts of burden over mountainous trails?”

For a time, this was indeed a mystery, but according to Zoll, researchers now believe the Camp Verde Meteorite “is more likely a fragment of the original 300,000-ton meteorite that separated from the main mass as it broke apart in the atmosphere and landed closer to Camp Verde.”

To read the full story, see the Wednesday, Jan. 21, edition of the Sedona Red Rock News.